i'm lucky for having a job to have gone to today. for having a car to drive home. for having a home to drive to at all. for being able to feed my tortoises better than some people eat. for not having three more precious little mouths to feed because i've had the choice to not have babies. for having the $4.71 to buy some friskies for the street cats. for having my choice of what to make for dinner. for having dinner. for that being my third meal of the day. for getting to go take a shower now, with $8 soap, then retire to my four-pillow bed with a fan in the window. and for getting to do it all again tomorrow.

ever think about how much you have to feel lucky for? and all because you got lucky to have been stationed here for your time on earth, rather than there.

Never forget how lucky we are. With this privilege of leisure should come the responsibility to do all we can to make the world a better place for everyone else--what Al Gore called "moral imagination."

I always have known these things and spent years trying to explain it to my children. They are just now slowly beginning to understand now that they are on their own. Just walking in the grocery stores in the US reminds me how lucky we are in a "gluttony, will we ever really be happy way"

A small boy lived by the ocean. He loved the creatures of the sea, especially the starfish, and he spent much of his time exploring the seashore.

One day the boy learned there would be a minus tide that would leave the starfish stranded on the sand.

When the tide went out, he went down to the beach, began picking up the stranded starfish, and tossing them back into the ocean.

An elderly man who lived next door came down to the beach to see what the boy was doing. Seeing the man's quizzical expression, the boy paused as he approached. "I'm saving the starfish!" the boy proudly declared.

When the neighbor saw all of the stranded starfish he shook his head and said: "I'm sorry to disappoint you, young man, but if you look down the beach, there are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see. And if you look up the beach the other way, it's the same. One little boy like you isn't going to make much of a difference."

The boy thought about this for a moment. Then he reached his small hand down to the sand, picked up another starfish, tossed it out into the ocean, and said: "Well, I sure made a difference for that one!"